Can You Cry Underwater? Ch 3 (final)

[Dimaduialiel]

Can You Cry Underwater? Ch 3

It was storming. I guess that should have been my first clue. It only ever stormed when something bad happened, or was about to. I remembered it storming when grandpa had a heart attack and grandma had a stroke. I believed it was the thunder that did it. Those loud sounds could startle anybody to death. Then it was storming when I had lost my dog to a pick up truck. The driver had not been able to see it through the rain, it was a Chihuahua and close to the ground, and the streets ad been slick with oil that had risen due to the pounding of water on the streets. The night that I revisted however, was the worst night in my history of nights, and it stood out in my mind like a sore thumb. I looked towards the fireplace and saw an eight-year-old version of me playing silently with a small toy car (one of my brother, Jack?s, favorite) while piecing together a puzzle that he had told me to work on before he went for his tetanus shot specifically so that I would not get his toys and play with them. But what eight-year-old sister pays attention to the demands of her twelve-year-old brother? When the cat?s away the mouse comes out to play; that?s the way life goes, and that?s the way life should be for any young pair of siblings, but we got the phone call.

I always wondered how they knew to call. Unless one of the doctors in the emergency room personally knew my family, how would they know whom to call? That question befuddled me up until then, though at the time the child me didn?t care who had called. I watched my young form race my dad to the telephone, both of us wanting to get to it first. My dad had let me win; I always knew that he had, even though I had pretended not to when I was young. That seemed to be our game when I was little; he would let me run, chase me, keep up with me but never pin me down. So I watched as my child form picked up the telephone with a happy ?hello,? a tad too bubbly for my adult ears. How could I have been such a happy child? I turned around in my memory, coz I didn?t want to see what happens next, I wanted to let go, but when I turned I saw the same scene again. I knew that I could leave that realm, but something in me prevented me from doing so. Perhaps my mind wanted to save me from my engagement party; I didn?t want to be there anyway, but I didn?t want to be in that realm any more.

My past self happily passed the phone onto my father oblivious to who had just called, and what was going on. My father took it from me and gives me a smile before putting the phone to his ear. The rest of the event had gone by in a flash, literally. Lightening filled the house, surrounding us all, like the flash at the zoo, but this time it was not capturing a happy family. The eight-year-old me tugged at his pants. Maybe it was little annoying but my father didn?t have to glare, and somehow I felt the glare on my adult self, somehow I had come to be the little girl again, staring up into the angry eyes of my father.

?Why are you angry, daddy? What?s wrong?? It had seemed to me, an innocent question even though, as I watched, I knew that I would have been better off not asking it.

?Jack and your mother won?t be coming home tonight.? He had told me deadpan. Lightening then thunder had struck and I jumped in my memory, having not expected it.

?Why aren?t they coming back? Mama said that she would come back with Jack.?

As a child I didn?t notice it, but the look had been burned into my memory so harshly that it became a scar to my adult self that I could examine at any time, and I looked it over then. My father?s eyes had taken on an animalistic light. He was cornered and ready to leap out at the first thing he saw. My question had made him see me and he drew his hand back.

I felt my head snap to the side; I did not know that people could feel in a memory, or maybe I just remembered all of the pain that I felt when my father laid his very first blow to my face. It seemed to pulse around me, searing my skull as the blows to my little face kept coming as he had yelled that my mommy and brother would never come back. The child me was on the verge of crying, and my father had yelled at me; crying was for the weak, and suddenly I was once again my own self, detached from the child, a mere observer in the dark.

As I grew up I was always told that we had to let go of the ones we love; doing that keeps us sane throughout our short lives. But I lost my brother, my mother, and most especially my father. How could I let go?

I looked back to the floor finally able to turn away from the scene before me, possibly because I had blacked out shortly after the blows started coming down on me wave after wave, so I had nothing else to remember of the night aside from the place itself. Before the fireplace sat two little toy cars, and a half finished puzzle. Did those disappear from my life as well?

******

Can You Cry Underwater? Ch 4

My eyes focused on my step-brother with his wife now at his elbow. I hoped my eyes didn?t look too glossy, I didn?t want them to know what went on in my head, it would not have been good for me if people could see all the way past my smile. I focused on Adrian?s whiny voice, telling me that I needed to leave with them, that I needed to escape my father and idiot fianc?. Minutes later and somehow we had moved to the elevator doors. Adrian looked frantic holding a cellular phone in hand while his wife put away her tiny digital camera. She had tears in her eyes. In the distance, above the noise coming from the ballroom, I could hear thunder.

?Has Charlie not come yet?? I asked Adrian, Charlie?s biological brother, already half anticipating the answer. He swallowed thickly and his wife held onto his hand. This kind of stress was not good for a pregnant woman.

?The hospital just called me.? He paused. ?She was just in an accident.?

?Who called??

?Her husband.?

I think my eyes became frantic for a split second before I covered it all up, it would not have helped to worry Adrian. ?Please take care of Tyler.? I said to Adrian. He nodded; he knew of the transformation of my father to the beast that ruled over me and forced me into a marriage that I did not want.

?Come with us, you can help us.?

As much as it hurt me to do so, I shook my head at Jessica. How could they expect me to leave, when they knew that my father would find me? I thought of my stepsister, Charlie for a brief second, but quickly shook my head to clear her image from my mind. Unfortunately Adrian drove her image back into my mind.

?Do it for Charlie. Escape from all of this; come with us.? I shook my head, this time at Adrian. His tears threatened to spill, and I saw it in his eyes again. Once more I had disappointed him as he turned around and left through an open elevator unmindful of the people exiting it. His wife gave me one more sorrowful glance before following suit.

The silver brush finish doors glared at me, seconds after my stepbrother and his wife had left me. The shiny surfaces dared me to push the unlit button to their left, the one with the arrow pointing to the ground. My fists lay by my sides tightly clenched. The blood had stopped flowing to my fingers, and the thought that, my fingers would eventually detach themselves from my hands by keeping my fists clenched so tightly for hours on end, flicked across my mind. It probably wouldn?t be a bad idea; after all, if my fingers fell off, then I wouldn?t have to worry about receiving the death sentence for disposing of a high and mighty executive (also known as my future husband) by way of impeding the flow of oxygen to his brain. No, that wouldn?t be enough. I could have just wrapped my tanned arms around the neck of the slime ball? what a juvenile term? ?slime ball,? but it suited my fianc?. However, I knew that I could not do that, I would never resort to murder, or, in that case, assassination, despite the fact that he was the most pompous, arrogant, chauvinistic, asset to my biological father?s company. We were the same in that aspect, he was an asset, just as I was, and for that he held my grudging respect. I was a resource, used up until all of my reserves ran dry and I was finally left to the dump. But could I change that?

I tried my hardest to relax the tensed muscles in my forearm, then those in my hands. I considered it. My eyes became glued to the unlit button alongside the elevator doors. I raised an arm, just a little ways past my hip, my index and middle fingers slightly outstretched. I could almost feel the cool, smooth surface just beneath the thin cloth covering my fingertips. It was so close. My freedom. But I stopped and wondered. What would I do? I needed money, and I could not live off of Adrian, Jessica, and their two children. Sure I had an education, but could I really survive out in the big world by myself? Was I willing to give it a try? Would my father be all right? Would I be all right? Again I noticed the hypnotic notes emanating from the violins, hiding the thunderous roars of the night sky. My hand fell down to my side. I needed to face my problems head on. I could take it, and I would take it, with grace.

A man took my hand in his and dragged me into the ocean of people before us. He was my fianc?. I couldn?t pull back, that would have look wrong. I couldn?t ask him to let go of my hand; that would have been futile. I let my eyes roam the area around me, looking for anyone that would help me. Then I remembered that Adrian and his wife had left, and Charlie, my dear Charlie had never made it.

Charlie had asked me once as a child, while I was at the pool upset because of my loss in a tournament and because I knew that I would be in for it from my father, if people could cry under water. I could only shrug at the time. It was all I felt that I could do. I had told her that it didn?t matter, that nobody would care, and that it wouldn?t make a difference, that nobody would see the tears. But, being dragged through the dense crowd of puffed up hypocrites smiling down at me from all angles at my own engagement party, I finally knew the answer to her question and I wanted to run to the hospital and scream it to her. I was right but then I was wrong. Sure, nobody would notice, but somebody would care, somebody would notice. That person shedding those tears? that individual would know, and to that one person in that single moment, it would mean the world. I knew the answer then, felt it bubble up from deep within me and I clung to the sensation knowing that though it didn?t mean a damned thing to anyone at that congregation, it would have mean the world to Charlie. I fought the burning sensation at the back of my throat, and blinked my eyes rapidly. I didn?t want the tears to fall, but one left the corner of my eye seconds before I wiped at it with a gloved hand, and I could feel myself drowning beneath false sincerity behind the guests? pleasantries. Lightening flashed through the room for a brief instant before darkness came.

finis

A/N: Oh lookie, two chapters in one... I thought the third chapter was too short so i just thought I'd put in ch 4... ok actualy I didn't think that, I'm just a spaz and titled the post incorrectly so I stuck chapters 3 and 4 in here.